Abstract A012: Targeting proteasome vulnerabilities for the treatment of monosomy 7 associated blood disorders

Monosomy 7 is among the most frequent cytogenetic abnormalities in hematological disorders and is associated with short survival and drug resistance. Despite its high prevalence and detrimental impact, the therapeutic vulnerabilities underlying monosomy 7-associated blood disorders remain largely elusive, impeding progress toward improved patient care. The homeostatic cellular requirement for a normal dosage of essential genes creates an opportunity to target vulnerabilities that arise due to reduced levels of proteins encoded by a haploinsufficient essential gene. Briefly, the loss of one copy of a dosage-sensitive essential gene (gene X), in combination with the inhibition of itself or a related gene (gene Y), or an associated pathway results in lethal consequences for cells. The remarkable and selective clinical efficacy of lenalidomide for the treatment of del(5q) MDS has demonstrated how allelic haploinsufficiency underlies the sensitivity to this drug by synthetic lethality. Differential expression analysis of gene and protein expression in primary AML samples with monosomy 7 revealed significant downregulation of multiple proteasome pathway members at the protein level, but not at the RNA level. Primary AML samples with -7/del(7q) exhibited increased sensitivity (low IC50) to the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, as evidenced by two independent ex vivo drug screening cohorts (the Beat AML and the FIMM study). Chromosome 7 harbors four proteasome subunits, PSMA2, PSMC2, PSMG3, and SEM1. We performed gene expression, protein expression, copy number analysis, and individual gene knockout experiments. The results have revealed PSMA2 to be a haploinsufficient essential gene on chromosome 7. PSMA2 knockout confers leukemia a growth disadvantage for multiple AML cell clines in both TP53 wild-type and knockout backgrounds. We generated PSMA2 isogenic hemizygous deletion and diploid single-cell clones. PSMA2 hemizygous deletion cells exhibited approximately half the protein expression compared to diploid controls, confirming that PSMA2 is a haploinsufficient gene. PSMA2hemizygous deletion single-cell clones showed significantly enhanced sensitivity to all three evaluated proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, ixazomib, and carfilzomib), aligning with the sensitivity observed in primary -7/del(7q) leukemia samples. PSMA2 hemizygous deletion cell clones displayed increased p38 and decreased pERK levels upon treatment with proteasome inhibitors, potentially contributing to their increased sensitivity to proteasome inhibitors. Proteomics analysis and in vivo validation is ongoing. As such, we have identified haploinsufficient essential gene PSMA2 mediated proteasome pathway vulnerability in monosomy 7 associated leukemia and further showed that proteasome inhibitors as promising therapeutic approaches for treating hematological disorders associated with monosomy 7. Citation Format: Haijiao Zhang, Basil Allen, Daniel Bottomly, Peter Ryabinin, Schannon K. Targeting proteasome vulnerabilities for the treatment of monosomy 7 associated blood disorders [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Expanding and Translating Cancer Synthetic Vulnerabilities; 2024 Jun 10-13; Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2024;23(6 Suppl):Abstract nr A012.